General Services wants state lawmakers to deal with plaza restrictions

The head of General Services appeared before a legislative committee Tuesday and said he’d like to get some help out of the state legislature in keeping long-term protests off War Memorial Plaza.

“We certainly want to work with legislators,” Commissioner Steve Cates told the committee, which had met to review a recent audit of the Department of General Services. Cates was responding to a question from state Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, about whether there’s a need for new legislation governing the plaza.

Neither Johnson nor Cates said exactly what kind of legislation they’d like to see. General Services said last month that its duty to oversee the grounds allows it create a curfew and new permitting regulations for the plaza. The department used those restrictions to authorize the arrest of 49 people in an attempt to clear the Occupy Nashville protest last month.

But Nashville judges have questioned whether the department has the authority to shut down the plaza and whether it followed proper rulemaking procedures in creating the restrictions. The issue will come back up in a federal court Monday.

State Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, followed up Johnson by asking some pointed questions about potential damage from the Occupy Nashville encampment. Bell said he has seen occupiers anchoring their tents by driving spikes into the plaza.

But David Carpenter, the facilities administrator for the Capitol, said he’d checked the situation out and that the spikes are being wedged into the spaces between the marble slabs on the plaza. They are too short to puncture the weatherproofing membrane that protects the Legislative Plaza office building beneath the square, he said, making it unlikely that any long-term damage is being done.

“We’ve asked them to police themselves” about such things, Carpenter said.